KFC Canada improves its animal welfare standards!
Every Tuesday for two years, Liberation BC activists could be found outside different KFCs in the Vancouver area, educating the public about the chain's deplorable treatment of chickens. Now we have big news: As of June 1st, 2008, KFC Canada has finally agreed to improve its animal welfare standards.
KFC Canada has agreed to purchase 100 percent of its chickens--through a phase-in program--from suppliers that use "controlled-atmosphere killing" (CAK), the least cruel method of bird slaughter available. CAK works by replacing birds' oxygen with a mixture of nonpoisonous inert gasses to gently put them "to sleep." It may sound horrible--because killing animals for a fleeting taste sensation always is--but for animals killed for food, it's a 180° turnaround. Gone will be the days of broken bones, abuse by workers (because with CAK, workers never handle live birds), electric shocks, and live throat slitting and scalding.
The campaign will end in Canada, but elsewhere in the world, it continues.
"With KFC Canada now doing exactly what we want KFC in the U.S. to do, our members and activists will be even more energetic and invigorated about going after KFC in other countries," Prescott said.
"All we want is for KFC worldwide to do what KFC Canada has done."
News from February 2008:
Great news!
There may be a long road ahead of us, but the birds have won this round! As of February 2008, the KFC on Broadway has been permanently closed!
KFC does chicken right? Not in our opinion.
The birds killed for KFC's restaurants are raised in enormous, feces-filled warehouses with thousands of other chickens. They are bred and drugged to grow so large and so fast that many cannot handle their own bodies; their legs splinter and break. At slaughter, the birds are frequently boiled alive in scalding hot defeathering tanks.
Other abuse has been documented by undercover investigators from PETA; in fact, at a KFC "Supplier of the Year", workers were filmed "tearing the heads off live birds, spitting tobacco into their eyes, spray-painting their faces, and violently stomping on them." (link)
KFC arranged a "KFC Animal Welfare Advisory Council" in 2001. It then ignored the board's suggestions and requests to the point that five of the members resigned. The panel is now composed of executives of Gold Kist, Pilgrim's Pride, and Tyson--the very companies they are meant to be advising.
In an article for the Chicago Tribune, Adele Douglass, a former member of the council, explained that KFC "never had any meetings. They never asked any advice, and then they touted to the press that they had this animal-welfare advisory committee. I felt like I was being used."Another former member of the board and North America’s leading scientific expert on bird welfare, Dr. Ian Duncan, told the Guelph Mercury that "[p]rogress was extremely slow, which is why I resigned. It was always going to be happening later. They just put off actually creating standards. … I suspect that upper management didn’t really think that animal welfare was important."
Watch the video to learn more:
Why target KFC?
KFC is responsible for the deaths of 850 million chickens annually, making it by far the largest chicken vendor in the world. If it demands certain modifications from its suppliers, nearly every chicken-producing factory farm will need to change!
This campaign was run with in conjunction with PETA. For more information, please visit KentuckyFriedCruelty.com.
